


Conquered by the Frost

by horrendoushaddock



Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 23:59:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16881750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/horrendoushaddock/pseuds/horrendoushaddock
Summary: Ficlet. And some part of him, the part that comes with being the middle child, and the part that’s been made of losing his father and childhood to war, wants to tear it all away from her.





	Conquered by the Frost

It’s cruel of him to taunt Lucy, he knows. She’s still so young, and these times are so hard; it wouldn’t have hurt him - or Peter, or Susan, really - to just let her go on making believe. So what if she thought she had, somehow, found another world inside of some old wardrobe in an empty room? So what if she claimed to have met a faun and had tea with him? There was no harm in that, was there? 

But there had been something about the way she had been so insistent, like she had actually believed these things. To make believe was one thing, but to begin to actually put faith in one’s own stories…? So, maybe Peter and Susan, at the very least, had been right to gently let the youngest Pevensie down. 

Edmund hadn’t had to take it those few steps farther. 

When Lucy creeps out of bed later on that night, he doesn’t have to follow her. He knows this. Still, though, he follows after her down the old and dark hallways of Diggory Kirke’s home, toward the spare room. He doesn’t care the way Peter and Susan do, but some part of him wants to see what’s so special about this wardrobe, what about it can rouse such imaginings from his little sister. And some part of him, the part that comes with being the middle child, and the part that’s been made of losing his father and childhood to war, wants to tear it all away from her. 

There is no time or place in this world now for happy stories of tea with fauns in other worlds. 

By the time he reaches the spare room, there’s no sign of Lucy. She must be hiding in the wardrobe, he thinks to himself, and so he advances on the old thing. He opens up the doors and calls for her, but there’s no answer. She’s committed to hiding, he figures, and he can humor that in his own way. 

There’s no real second thought as he steps into the wardrobe himself and closes the door behind him. He reaches out, pressing his hands to the fur coats hanging there. A sort of anxiety begins to twist about his heart, because all he can feel are the coats. There’s no sign of Lucy.

She must have gone somewhere else, he thinks, though he’s certain he saw her come in here. And there’s nowhere else in this room to hide. Stubbornly, he presses onward, shoving passed coats, passed sudden branches of evergreens. 

Maybe it’s his nerves that make him lose his footing, or maybe it’s the snow, but he winds up taking a gentle tumble into freshly fallen snow. He gets to his feet quick enough and takes a look around, and his mind reels at what he sees. There is snow on the ground, a lot of it, and more falling, and a forest all around him. Some part of him is screaming to just turn around, to go back the way he came, but he’s also so painfully curious. And, besides all of that, he supposes he should find Lucy. 

He calls for her a few times, walking on passed a singular lamp post and hugging his housecoat tightly to his body. If he had known, even in the least, that he would have walked right on through to a sort of winter, he would have at least grabbed a coat. But, of course he hadn’t thought of that; he hadn’t expected any of this to be real. 

He only stops walking when the sound of sleigh bells catch his attention. He doesn’t know what he expects, really, but it’s certainly not a sleigh pulled by white reindeer. He just barely gets out of the way, tossing himself into a snowbank to avoid being trampled. From there, the rest happens so quickly. There’s a dwarf atop him and a dagger to his throat. There’s a false queen, a white witch, offering him great and wonderful things. 

And he thinks, only idly, of Lucy as he sits with the Queen in her sleigh, her coat about his shoulders and a treacherous promise on his lips.


End file.
